He sits back. “I’m giving you your crease back because you’ve earned it on the ice and because now I understand why the bomb went off. But you’re still on thin fucking ice with me. You slip again, you don’t get to hide behind good intentions or my kid’s name. You come to me next time. About Rylan. About anyone. About her.”
My throat feels tight. “Yes, Coach.”
Adrian’s voice from last week ghosts through my head—If you ever need help with him, with your old man, with Rylan, you don’t do it alone, you hear me?Two lifelines on the table now, and I’m still wired to white-knuckle everything myself.
“And Declan?”
“Yeah?”
“If you care about Talia at all—and I’m not blind, I can see you do—” his voice roughens, “you keep your control around her. She doesn’t need another man using his temper to mark territory. She needs quiet. She needs consistency. She needs to not be collateral damage in someone else’s war.”
My chest aches. “I know.”
And she doesn’t even know the whole story. All she hears in the halls is that I snapped, that I dented a locker, that I’m a freak. She gets the headline, not the context. In her head, I’m still the guy with his hand on someone’s throat.
He nods once, like that’s the only answer he’ll accept. “Get dressed. You’ve got thirty minutes before we’re on the ice. I want to see the goalie who reads angles, not the kid who sees red.”
“Yes, Coach.”
“Dismissed.”
I stand. My legs feel weirdly light, like I stepped off a long bus ride. At the door, his voice stops me.
“Reid.”
I look back.
“For what it’s worth,” he says, “you were right about one thing.”
“What’s that?”
His eyes harden. “Rylan doesn’t get to say her name like that either.”
Something ugly and satisfied moves through me. I nod once. Then I leave.
The locker room goes quiet when I walk in. Not completely—music still thumps low, someone’s laughing in the showers—but the energy shifts. Heads turn. Conversations stutter.
I keep my gaze straight ahead. My stall is where I left it. Gear stacked neat. Stick propped in its spot, tape frayed at the top from my hands.
Adrian’s on the bench two down from me, bent over his skates. He looks up as I drop my bag. There’s a beat of silence. Then he punches my shoulder, not hard.
“Bout time,” he says. “Backup was giving me heartburn.”
Light laughter snaps the tension. Gio mutters something about “freak goalies” and “dramatic exits.” The room exhales.
“Coach talk?” Adrian asks, voice low.
“Yeah.” I reach for my underlayers. “I’m back.”
“For now,” Gio adds.
“Shut up,” I tell him, but there’s no heat in it.
The ritual slides over me as I dress—compression, pads, chest, mask. My hands shake once when I tape my stick, then steady. Tape, smooth. Tape, smooth. Stop it from breaking.
Adrian nudges my knee with his. “If your old man or Admin tries anything, you tell me,” he mutters. “I told you—I’m in.”
I grunt something that could be agreement. I don’t know how to hand someone else a lit match without burning us both.
